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Topic: Exchanges with People that Make Your Brain Hurt (Read 1133899 times)

I hurt a friend's brain as a kid. We were both born in '78 but she was born in January and I in November, plus she was a year ahead of me in school. One year she asked me what year I was born and I told her. She insisted that couldn't possibly be true and she kept asking me, insisting I was wrong when I kept saying 1978.

I did finally say "Fine, ask my mom if you don't believe me." I don't recall her ever asking her, at least not around me so either she figured it out or her mother pointed out that "Sharon" had turned 10 already and I was nine and would turn 10 in November. (this was during the summer, I think)

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Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here. Be cheerful, strive to be happy. -Desiderata

Still on topic, but related to birthdays - my older daughter's birthday is December 21. It's amazing how many people assume that she gets cheated out of presents, or that we consider her birthday to be less "special" because it's so close to Christmas.

My birthday is also 21st and some of my friends and family do give me one present a year.

I had a brain hurty argument with someone about my birthdate versus my age. They insisted that becuase I was born in 1979 I must be 34 this year (the entire year). But they could not grasp that that only applies on the last 10 days of the year, you know, AFTER my 34th birthday at the end of this year. They resolutely insisted I was counting my birthdays wrong.

And it always seems LONGER between birthdays if your birthday is in December. I don't know why, but it does.

This could fit equally well with brain hurting, professional darwinism, or never shopping (banking) somewhere again, so I just picked one :-)

Some of my friends started a new scout troop this year for their girls. Babybartfast won't be old enough to join until next year, so I'm on the rosters as one of the adult helpers for the troop but I don't really participate in much yet. When my friend Alice went to open a bank account for the troop, she was told by the council that she had to go through LocalBank because all the troops had accounts there and they knew what to do. She opened the account, got the little book of starter checks and deposit slips, ordered some real checks, etc. Alice had several small deposits totaling a few hundred dollars (everyone's sign-up fees), then one larger deposit and a larger withdrawal at the same time - the deposit and withdrawal were about the same amount, but she had to put the money in and out for accounting purposes. That was back in October - since then, it's mostly been a stream of small checks for various supplies the troop needs.

When the real checks came, Alice realized the bank account number was different than on her paperwork. LocalBank wouldn't tell her who the account belonged to, but they were okay with her having a package of checks to draw on that account? They finally were willing to tell her that the other account belonged to a different scout troop, and with some begging she got them to tell her the troop number, and with that she was able to track down (via the council) who the troop leader was.

As it comes out, the starter checkbook (checks and deposit slips) they gave Alice was for the wrong troop. All the small deposits went into our troop account, because Alice was doing those with the deposit slips at the bank, but the checks were coming out of another troop's money! And they hadn't noticed for three months! The larger withdrawal would have bounced if Alice hadn't happened to have used one of the starter deposit slips for the larger deposit at the same time.

With the help of the council, they finally got everything resolved just in time before cookie sale season. The real brain-hurty part: the other troop leader (and person responsible for the other troop's checkbook) is an accountant At the next meeting the council held for troop leaders (which they do once a month), the council staff stressed VERY strongly that everyone needed to actually check their troop's bank balance on a regular basis . . .

0_0 Yikes! You'd think an accountant would know better. But then, I was watching an episode of Restaurant Impossible, and saw a similar scenario play out there, so maybe not.

The restaurant was a joint venture between four men, one of whom had run restaurants before, two of whom supplied capital, and an accountant. The restaurant was losing money at the rate of $10,000/month. Robert Irvine (the host) checks their books and discovers that not only are they losing money on every lunch service, the servers are comping close to $30,000 a month! He brings this to the accountant's attention since, well, he should probably have noticed. The accountant's response? "Well, I just look at the big picture numbers, not the breakdown." That's about where my brain started to hurt.

Still on topic, but related to birthdays - my older daughter's birthday is December 21. It's amazing how many people assume that she gets cheated out of presents, or that we consider her birthday to be less "special" because it's so close to Christmas.

My birthday is also 21st and some of my friends and family do give me one present a year.

I had a brain hurty argument with someone about my birthdate versus my age. They insisted that becuase I was born in 1979 I must be 34 this year (the entire year). But they could not grasp that that only applies on the last 10 days of the year, you know, AFTER my 34th birthday at the end of this year. They resolutely insisted I was counting my birthdays wrong.

I thought I was the only one who had that conversation! My birthday is at the end of November and several people have argued with me about how old I am.

Still on topic, but related to birthdays - my older daughter's birthday is December 21. It's amazing how many people assume that she gets cheated out of presents, or that we consider her birthday to be less "special" because it's so close to Christmas.

My birthday is also 21st and some of my friends and family do give me one present a year.

I had a brain hurty argument with someone about my birthdate versus my age. They insisted that becuase I was born in 1979 I must be 34 this year (the entire year). But they could not grasp that that only applies on the last 10 days of the year, you know, AFTER my 34th birthday at the end of this year. They resolutely insisted I was counting my birthdays wrong.

I thought I was the only one who had that conversation! My birthday is at the end of November and several people have argued with me about how old I am.

So it's not just me? I'm a late October birthday and my school district's cut-off for Kindy was October 31st. Right after that they realized that some of the kids starting were just Too Young and changed it to September 1st (which was in line with other schools in the area.) So I was always the youngest one in the class and spent all of school with people telling me I didn't know my own age on my birthday. I had a prolonged argument when I turedn 14 with a boy telling me that I was too stupid to know my own age which was 15. (And he later wondered why I was not wanting to go out with him.)

Not to mention, I once had to write a 20 page autobiography for a writing class in college. I wrote a series of stories about how specific events in my life marked new eras of thinking. I referenced these with ages and grades. My professor changed my ages with a red pen. (She was an over-excited grad student who was determined to whip us into shape.) For instance, when I said I was 10 and in 5th grade, she said I was 11 because 5th graders turn 11. Even if I hadn't had that odd loophole in starting school, there are at least a quarter of kids who are born in the summer and who will never ever be 11 in 5th grade.

And to add, there was one time when my roommate asked my mother, "Did you know that Snowflake is turning 20 tomorrow?"

My mother's response was, "It took me 36 hours to get her out. How could I forget it?"

My mom forgot my birthday once so yeah - I can see it happening. The best part was that we were discussing what to do for my birthday and the phone rang and my mom says "Wolfie's bday? no we don't have any plans for that day"

And to add, there was one time when my roommate asked my mother, "Did you know that Snowflake is turning 20 tomorrow?"

My mother's response was, "It took me 36 hours to get her out. How could I forget it?"

My mom forgot my birthday once so yeah - I can see it happening. The best part was that we were discussing what to do for my birthday and the phone rang and my mom says "Wolfie's bday? no we don't have any plans for that day"

And to add, there was one time when my roommate asked my mother, "Did you know that Snowflake is turning 20 tomorrow?"

My mother's response was, "It took me 36 hours to get her out. How could I forget it?"

My mom forgot my birthday once so yeah - I can see it happening. The best part was that we were discussing what to do for my birthday and the phone rang and my mom says "Wolfie's bday? no we don't have any plans for that day"

And to add, there was one time when my roommate asked my mother, "Did you know that Snowflake is turning 20 tomorrow?"

My mother's response was, "It took me 36 hours to get her out. How could I forget it?"

My mom forgot my birthday once so yeah - I can see it happening. The best part was that we were discussing what to do for my birthday and the phone rang and my mom says "Wolfie's bday? no we don't have any plans for that day"

My dad once forgot my birthday until he turned on the news and realized that it was the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks (yep, my birthday is 9/11).

Age 14. I delibrately didn't mention to anyone that my birthday was coming up. Not a single person remembered. I forgave my friends; to be honest, I couldn't remember the exact day of their birthdays either. My sister was forgiven since the birthday card was mailed before my birthday, it just didn't arrive in time. I was very upset that my mother forgot, though.

Babybartfast was born on my parents' anniversary. She arrived while they were on a two-week vacation to Germany to celebrate said anniversary. When I called to tell them the news, I included a "Happy Anniversary!" and my dad's first reaction was "Wait, it's our anniversary?"

He tried to backpedal and say he was just confused by the time change and wasn't sure of the date (yeah, right) but since Babybartfast is the first grandchild and he can remember her birthday easily, he now remembers his anniversary too! The kicker: it's three days before his own birthday, and the day before my sister's, so you'd think that whole week would kind of stick in his brain!

I have a friend whose birthday and wedding anniversary are both on February 14. You would think that her husband would never, ever forget that date. You'd be wrong.

One time, my husband and I were invited out to dinner by friends of ours, who had gotten married on June 6 1993. The date they chose for the dinner was June 6 2003. "Aw, how nice - they planned an anniversary dinner and included us," we thought. Nope. When we offered a toast to their 10th anniversary, they both stared at us blankly.

Regarding the stories about not knowing your own age, I had a similar discussion with my oldest daughter one year, but in reverse. She was going to turn 18 at the end of the year (December birthday) but somehow got confused. She kept insisting that since the year was 2010 she was already 18. It took a lot of explaining to get her to see her error. I'm still not sure what happened as she had never made that kind of mistake before.

I cut people slack if it's near their birthdays. I was answering screening questions recently, and one of them was "how old are you?" and I said "48. No, wait, forty-nine" and then told her "but I know my birthday is thus-and-such." The annoying thing is that this wasn't a couple of days after my birthday, but a couple of months.

This may be because these aren't ages that are socially or legally significant, like being old enough to vote or drink or collect social security or the round numbers that are a big deal to some people.

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Any advice that requires the use of a time machine may safely be ignored.